Colombia 4 (Almost a Mongolian clusterfuck)
Trip Start
Unknown
1
4
Trip End
Ongoing
Barranquilla,
Colombia
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
The reality... yes, gorgeous white sandy beaches, delicious fruits with bizarre and complex names, and swarthy men. But the sand is too hot to stand on, the fruits are liable to give you dysentery, and the swarthy men are invariable oiled up and clad in a repulsive little banana.-smuggler.
Nah, that's not totally true, either. Thing is, it seems that Colombians like the idea of pretty, unspoiled places but they hate the reality of them. Last weekend, I kind of went to Tayrona, which is arguably one of the most gorgeous places I've seen in Colombia. The beaches were perfect, long sandy affairs lined with palm trees and all the other appropriate tropical accoutrements. The water was that brilliant Caribbean blue and a fantastic refreshing temperature only bordering on tepid (okay, so the waves were a bit daunting in some places but those reminded me of home). And there were great piles of boulders (perfect for climbing) that divided the succession of incredible beaches. I was in awe. I LOVED it! But we only spent two hours there. I was PISSED!
So, here's the saga: Unfortunately, I had made the mistake of announcing my intention to travel to Tayrona that weekend to the woman I live with, who is incredibly well-meaning and overall, an awesome person, but at heart is a Colombian with Colombian driving habits and the Colombian sense of the aesthetic. And I have yet to meet a Colombian who understands my affinity for peace and quiet. (I almost used the word "tranquillity" but as you all know, that particular term has sadly taken on a negative connotation.) She decided she would go with me. Cool. Then she invited her sister-in-law and her kid. Okay. Then her sister-in-law invited her sister and her kid. A little less cool, bordering on not okay. I saw where this was going and I didn't like it.
So, we didn't leave like I had originally planned on Friday afternoon. And we didn't leave early Saturday morning, as I was assured we would. And when we arrived to pick up the sister-in-law at noon, she wasn't at her house. We waited until 2:30. Then her sister didn't show up until after 3:00. And of course we spend a lot of time clucking, because that's what is done here. And then we piled six people into a car that kind of fits four somewhat comfortably. And promptly got lost, less than two blocks from where three of the women in the car had lived for more than 30 years. Doing anything here is an exercise in patience that I suspect even a saint would have a hard time enduring.
Can I reiterate: I just don't fucking get it!
First, the Colombian sense of direction borders on the mentally retarded. People here are simply amazed that I can remember that Calle Simon Bolivar, the largest street in Barranquilla, leads directly to the airport and bisects the city (after two months... I fucking hope I remember!). I, in turn, am simply amazed that after 45 years or more of navigating these same city streets, they can't remember that Calle Simon Bolivar runs directly through the whole city and leads to the airport. It's not fucking brain surgery.
Second, the driving... I almost prefer being lost because though we're driving around in weird little circles and stopping randomly in the middle of busy city streets without any respect for self-preservation, at least we're not barrelling down the road at mach speeds employing terrifyingly erratic driving skills. Though I remain a steadfast Agnostic, a part of me has to make an exception when it comes to understanding how Colombians survive into adulthood. There is no other explanation other than one god or another has chosen this country to work miracles of survival...
Take, for instance, the road signs advertising speed bumps (aptly called "dead policemen" here): you can see these goddamn signs from fucking Mars but somehow drivers manage to ignore them and hit these freaking speed bumps-and these are speed bumps! I'm sure not a few cars have been destroyed by these things-at full speed, then they slam on their brakes (yes, after the bump), swerve, careen a little, curse and get pissed off at... oh, jeez, I don't know who they're pissed at but there's always a lot of offended yelling and gesticulating after a speed bump disaster... and then they speed up again, swerve again into the oncoming lane, forcing the oncoming car to squeeze off the road, causing more swearing and gesticulating, and then finally things calm down.
So, while they manage to miss-almost without fail-these freaking GIGANTIC road signs, they'll see a car parked half a mile up the road and about 25 feet off the side of the road, and they will slam on their brakes without warning, setting off a cacophony of blaring horns, screeching tires, swerving, gesticulating, swearing, and finally, nervous laughter. My nerves were a little raw after the second hour of this shit.
It could be easy to blame it on the roads, though. The speed bumps are, admittedly, placed without regard to reason or safety. They are very rarely located near schools or within towns. And if a large and inconvenient item, like, say, a log (seriously... we almost lost our lives to that fiasco, too), falls in the road, rather than move the fucking thing off the road, road crews simply cement it into the fabric of the motorway. I can't see the logic but somewhere there's gotta be some rational.
So, after much fanfare, we get to Rodadero, just south of Santa Marta, which by all rights should be an hour, maybe two hour affair, but we have managed to stretch it into an odyssey of more than three hours. Rodadero is a beach resort town and it's disgusting. I tried to imagine it without the high-rises and the garbage and I could imagine that it might have once been almost pleasant. The beach seriously feels like a mosh pit and there was garbage everywhere, including in the water, where several thousand people where splashing around. I wanted to cry. This wasn't fucking Tayrona!
Four words: thank god for kids! The two boys, wiry, energetic little guys, were kicking around a soccer ball with kind of hyperactive mania that I totally understood. I promised to make sure neither would drown and off we went!
The next morning, we all get up hella early, repeat all the bizarre time-consuming, death-defying shenanigans, and drive the 20 miles or so up the coast to Parque Tayrona, one of Colombia's fine nature reserves. The entrance fees are hefty by Colombian standards-even I was a bit grumpy at having to pay the 7,400 pesos (a little less than $3! So worth it.)-and after much grumbling and bargaining (which, incidentally, didn't work), we park. From my admittedly limited observations, it seems that many Colombians like to drive up to beaches, park on the sand a few feet behind the awful tent-like structures that consume roughly 90 percent of the beach space, and then hang out and pretend like they're at a night club. At Tayrona, you have to walk for about 10 minutes (or more) to get to a completely deserted beach. There is a very stark difference between these two notions of paradise...
While I was in my own little tourist heaven, loving the absence of hawkers and garbage and crowds and loud, blaring music, my friends looked like they were being tortured. I almost felt bad but then remembered that I had meant to spend the whole weekend here and, as much as I adored all of them, they had literally hijacked my mini-vacation. Still, they managed to keep me laughing... in spite of having what I consider to be a perverted sense of beauty, they are lively, energetic, and freaking hilarious. I felt like we were trapped in this crazy little bubble of pure chaos but removed from the confines of the car and the unsettling effect of being truly and constantly being worried for my life, I kind of enjoyed the entertainment.
Anyway, Tayrona was gorgeous and in a pair of seconds, my clothes were shucked and I went scampering off into the rock piles, frolicked in the waves, and checked out some deserted beaches. Unfortunately, while the park afforded me everything I could have asked for, it was simply derelict of the kind of stimulation my friends needed (I'm still working on trying to define what that may be...). Two hours later, we were back in the car, getting lost, swerving, swearing, gesticulating, and finally returning to Rodedero, where all of our moods took a 180. I became annoyed and sulky-seriously, who the hell prefers loud, polluted, dirty, crowded Rodadero over Tayrona??!!!-and everyone else became chipper again. Whoa! HUGE discrepancies in our notions of beauty, relaxation, and enjoyment...
Then we went home, and the return journey was much the same fiasco as the day before. So, my mini-vacation left me feeling like I had endured two straight days of high-voltage shock therapy. Maybe next weekend I'll sneak away...
